Traditional user input devices such as keyboards and mice may be tethered to a device, and further, they may be universally specified without regards to a user's cultural background. For example, keyboards may be universally designed based on the English alphabet for all users. Recently, user input devices move toward un-tethered inputs such as touch screens. A touch screen may display a graphic user interface (GUI) for a user to interact with the GUI via the touch screen in manners similar to a mouse. For example, buttons may be displayed on a touch screen for the user to select and activate. On the other hand, touch screens also may be used to recognize simple gestures. For example, a touch screen may be used to sense a one-dimensional movement such as left-to-right swaps as an instruction for turning a web page. However, these gesture inputs, although less restrictive, are still based on their utility rather than on a user's cultural background.
Natural gestures also may be used to input user instructions. Human gestures may include hand gestures and/or body gestures. These natural gestures may be sensed by sensors such as video cameras. The sensor data may be further analyzed by a processor to detect these gestures. For example, multiple video cameras may be used to detect and interpret human gestures in three dimensional space. The interpretation of the human natural gestures may be used as input of instructions to a device executing software applications.
One advantage of using human natural gestures as an input command is that they are less restrictive and more natural to a user. Thus, the user may respond and command a machine with gestures that he is adapted to in a society. Since these human gestures are natural just as those used in real life, these gestures may be encoded with cultural differences. Therefore, seemingly the same gestures may have different meanings in different cultural backgrounds. For example, a simple gesture of “thumbs up” may mean “OK” in U.S., “money” in Japan, and “zero” in Indonesia. Thus, if natural gestures are used as command inputs without consideration in the context of cultural differences, the business software application may misinterpret the simple “thumbs up” gesture.
Business software applications usually may operate under a certain operating environment which may include globally setting certain configurations of the device on which it runs. For example, a SAP Business Object (BO) may allow a global setting to a certain language such as English or Germany. However, when natural gestures are used as the input, an entirely new layer of global setting mechanism may be needed to adapt the computer system for the gesture inputs based on cultural differences.